Tape winding machines, also known as "cassette loading machines" are well known in the art. Such devices are generally used to transfer magnetic recording tape from large supply reels prepared during tape manufacture to the smaller reels or cassettes utilized by commercially-available recording and playback equipment. See, for example, the following U.S. patents and the references cited therein: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,637,153; 3,814,343; 3,940,080; 3,964,100, 3,997,123; 3,917,184 and 4,061,286.
Where fresh tape is to be loaded into cassettes, it is sometimes desirable to provide the tape winding machine with a magazine for storing a number of empty cassettes prior to their being filled with tape. The use of such magazines is advantageous in that it allows the tape winding machine to be automated so as to run for prolonged periods of time with minimal operator supervision, thereby cutting production costs and increasing machine productivity. In general these cassette magazines comprise a tall vertical chute having a rectangular cross-section which slidably constrains a plurality of cassettes stacked one on top of another. Fresh cassettes are typically loaded into the top of the chute by hand and withdrawn from the bottom of chute by successively removing the bottom-most cassette via automatic means. Such magazines and their attendant apparatus are shown in such U.S. Pat. Nos. as 3,997,123 and 4,061,286 and the references cited therein.
One problem which has been encountered with magazines such as those described above is that of cassette orientation. This problem arises from the fact that the empty tape cassettes which are to be filled with tape must all be received at the loading station of the tape winding machine with a specific orientation if the tape winding machine is to fill the cassettes with tape. In particular, the cassettes must be advanced to the winding machine oriented in such a way that the side of the cassette which exposes the cassette's leader tape i.e. the "open side" of the cassette, faces down and is accessible to the winding machine's leader extractor member. Unfortunately, the rectangular cross-section of the magazine chute is arranged only to align the outer perimeters of the cassettes with one another and not to orient the cassettes so that their open sides are correspondingly positioned. Thus, if empty cassettes are randomly fed into the top of the cassette magazine, cassettes will arrive at the discharge end of the magazine so that some of them will have their open sides facing one way while the rest will be facing the opposite way. This lack of uniformity in cassette orientation creates severe problems, since as was mentioned above the empty cassettes must all arrive at their loading position with their open sides facing down and accessible to the winding machine's leader extractor member in order for the winding machine to fill the cassettes with tape. Complicating the problem is the fact that most cassettes are of the type shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,753,834 and 3,940,080, i.e. they have a stepped configuration and are thicker at their open sides than at their closed sides. The stepped configuration complicates storing the cassettes and feeding them one at a time into the winding machine, since if the cassettes are stacked one on the other and are all oriented identically the stack will be curved instead of straight.
The current solution to this cassette orientation problem has generally been to require the winding machine's operator to carefully load each empty cassette into the top end of a curved magazine with a specific, uniform orientation so that all of the cassettes will arrive at the bottom of the chute with their open sides facing the same direction. Such uniform cassette orientation at the bottom of the magazine chute then allows the cassettes to be advanced to their loading position with the proper orientation for filling by the tape winding machine. Unfortunately, this solution suffers from a number of disadvantages. First, requiring the machine operator to precisely orient each cassette as it is loaded into the cassette magazine leads to increased operator attendance at each winding machine and thereby drives labor costs upward and machine productivity downward. Second, by leaving the task of proper cassette orientation to a fallible human operator, the risk is increased that a cassette will be fed to the tape winding machine with an incorrect orientation. This is undesirable since the tape winding machine may be deactivated for a significant period of time when it encounters an improperly oriented cassette.
As a result, the primary object of the present invention is to provide a device for positioning cassettes between a tape cassette magazine and a tape winding machine so as to assure that all of the cassettes emerging from the magazine will be correctly oriented for proper reception by the tape winding machine even when the cassettes are loaded into the cassette magazine without a specific uniform orientation.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a cassette orienting device which is compatible with tape winding machines and cassette magazines of the type described above.
Still another object is to provide novel means for automatically causing a tape cassette to assume a predetermined orientation as the cassette moves along a selected path, e.g. from a cassette storage station to a cassette loading station.